zompist bboard

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The man of science is perceiving and endowed with vision whereas he who is ignorant and neglectful of this development is blind. The investigating mind is attentive, alive; the mind callous and indifferent is deaf and dead. - 'Abdu'l-Bahá

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The man of science is perceiving and endowed with vision whereas he who is ignorant and neglectful of this development is blind. The investigating mind is attentive, alive; the mind callous and indifferent is deaf and dead. - 'Abdu'l-Bahá

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Sander/benanne
(pdf)
(omniglot)

I wanted to add my thanks to Sander -- I've long been aware of the main elements of morphosyntactic alignment, but I don't think I've ever seen them sketched out so neatly.

In addition, the diagram works well, once I fully understood it. (Initially, I focused only on the roles depicted and their alignment groupings, and my first impression was, "Why is A in there twice?", until I realized that the three rows corresponded to intransitive/monotransitive/ditransitive sentences. Incidentally, I notice that the agent of a monotransitive sentence and that of a ditransitive one are marked identically in all of the examples given; what about a language that distinguished between the two? I'm pretty sure that at least one person here has created one...)

In terms of my own embryonic conlangs (as far as I can recall -- I haven't done much with them lately), my "main" language, Chusole, and its relatives are accusative-dative, as is another major family, Ramiiyan. The Meri (Coastal) languages are active-dative; the parent language is Fluid-S, with one daughter branch becoming Split-S, based primarily on control, while a second, more isolated branch retains the Fluid-S alignment. (I had also contemplated a more distant branch of the same family that was fully ergative, but that might be best saved for a different project.) The language of the coastal Northlanders was intended to be polysynthetic and incorporating, with an effectively ergative alignment (S and P/T are incorporated into the verb, while A remains separate; I wasn't sure how to handle R, but I suspect that it would be incorporated in some fashion as well.)

As the above implies, I have spent time thinking about the SAP alignment, but precious little considering the PRT one, which is a bit of a shame; if I pick up the pieces again, I will definitely contemplate the potential permutations of the latter. (For example, it would be quite possible to turn Chusole into a dechticaetiative language... )

Thanks again!

p@,
Glenn

[Yes, I've been looking through all the pages I've missed and finding interesting threads. Expect a lot of random dredgings]

I'm not sure how to categorise my system. It's based on animacy/agentness - the core roles of agent, experiencer and patient are marked as cases - and doesn't have the fixed syntactic roles of subject and object [so no contrast between agent-like subject and patient-like subject is possible].

The three example sentences [and one extra] would be rendered as follws. Red, green and blue represent the three cases: Agent, experiencer and patient:

Intransitive: Sleeps he (S) ...... Runs he (S)

Monotransitive: Hits he (A) her (P)

Ditransitive: Gives he (A) her (R) a book (T)

It's clearly not ergative, accusiative or active as S isn't always grouped togetehr. It's not active as it doesn't "group S with P or with A, depending on an external factor.", but groups S with A or in it's own case, depending on external factors [animacy of the interaction. Running is primarily an agent driven action - you choose to run. Sleeping is a mental experience of an animate being].

It is almost tripartite, where S, A and P each have their own case, except that S is split between it's own case and A. Could it be called split-tripartite? [by analogy with split ergative], or would this be an animacy hierarchy? Or maybe active-tripartite?

Any idea what is a good name?

Now for P, R and T

Not sure! Dative languages view the receiving person as being similar to the patient, where dechticaetiative langs view the theme as being more similar to the patient. I guess I have to decide what a prototypical member of the Patient case is before I decide on this.

So far my core cases are
Agent - active and volitional animate performer of an action [I look at you]
Experiencer - animate being which undergoes a mental experience during the action but is not acting volitionally, ie not an agent [I see you]
Patient - core participant in an action which is neither agent or experiencer. Either inanimate, and so incapable of being A or E, or an animate being whose role involves no conscious action or experience [I see you, you die, I kill you]

Perhaps the recipient should take the core role and group with the patient as the recipient is more likely to be an animate being than the theme is, the theme would then be relegated to a less important non-core case. That would make it dechticaetiative. Making it dative and relegating the animate recipient to the oblique dative case seems not to gel well with the animacy focus.

The dechticaetiative bit might change if I decide to view it in terms of a benefactive action. The recipient might be marked as beneficient, and the theme as patient. Undecided.

So I guess it's, um, active-tripartite dechticaetiative.

Any comments?

My conlang is ergative-dechticaetiative. (That is, my primary conlang; I'm experimenting a bit with other forms of ergativity.) Ergative-dative just didn't make sense.

Intransitive: Katole kato-lasa. The student learned.
Monotransitive: Katonu-ka katole kato-lasa. The teacher taught the student.
("Teacher, "student," and "teach/learn" all have the same word root; the language is SOV. I don't usually put hyphens in, but I'm putting them in here to make it easier to understand.)
Ditransitive: Katonu-ka katole kona-su kato-lasa. The teacher taught writing to the student.

Note: -su is also the antipassive marker; there used to be a separate case, but it merged with the antipassive. Here's how that works:

Katole-ka kona kato-lasa. The student learned writing (non-antipassive).
Katole kona-su kato-lasa. The student learned writing (antipassive).

This sometimes leads to sentences with no absolutive case:

Katonu-ka kona-su kato-lasa. The teacher taught writing.

Of course, you could just leave the antipassive case out:

Katonu-ka kona kato-lasa. The teacher taught writing.

If the meaning is clear from the context, you can omit cases altogether, as in Japanese.

Katonu katole kato-lasa./Katole katonu kato-lasa. The teacher taught the student.

There is no confusion because teachers teach students, not the other way around (at least, not usually). If it really is the other way around, you need the case markers.

I'm going to tentatively call Kahnei (or Ka'ne or ["ka.nei] or however you want to spell it) a tripartite language, since Agent, Direct Object/Theme, & Experiencer/Indirect Object have different slots in the word order, and there are also particles that mark each. The particles are optional--it's good form to structure your sentences so cleanly that you can leave them out, but if you need them, they're there.

Shisu kimei kelethim: literally [cat] [girl] [I give], would clearly mean "I give the cat to the girl" to most Khanei speakers, since the direct object/theme goes first, the verb/subject/agent goes last, and the recipient/indirect object goes in between.

Being more interested in clarity than notions of austere literary beauty, I personally would probably write: Shisuanan kimei kelethim, still "I give the cat to the girl," but this time the word for "cat" has been marked with a particle indicating direct-objectness. The final position of "kelethim," and its status as a verb+person marker, pretty unambiguously mark it as the agent of the action. "Lethim" (give) is a ditransitive verb, and "kimei" is the only word left, so that more or less settles "kimei's" status as the receiver/indirect object, even disregarding its medial position.

Attaching any more syntax-particles would start to sound redundant and silly, but that changes if you throw another verb in there:

Shisu u'okopashta kimei kelethim: literally, [cat] [he/she/it is sleeping] [girl] [I give]. Who's asleep here? The cat? The girl? The speaker, who must have some kind of somnambulistic pet-distribution problem? Verbs-as-modifiers don't have a fixed grammatical position, so this is a perfectly grammatical Khanei sentence that is completely confusing. Adding particles that indicate the participants' relationships to each other helps:

Shisuanan a'u'okopashta ojukimei kelethim: literally, [cat+d.o. marker] [sleeping+abbreviated form of the d.o. marker] [girl+recipient marker] [I give]. "Sleeping" now agrees with "cat," and contrasts with "girl" and "I give." The meaning is therefore, "I give the sleeping cat to the girl."

If you want to get more complicated, you can write:

Shisu u'okopashta kimei u'okolethim tokai: [cat] [he/she/it is sleeping] [girl] [he/she/it is giving] [man]. "Man's" presence at the end of the sentence strongly suggests that it is the subject of the sentence, and most probably its agent, just as "cat's" position strongly suggests it's the d.o. and the theme. Subject and agent need not be the same, however, or this thread would not exist, and the number of nouns and verbs in this sentence is confusing. It could conceivably mean all kinds of things involving men, sleeping, girls, cats, and giving. It could plausibly be indecent.

You can fix that with particles that positively identify each participant's role:

Shisuanan a'u'okopashta ojukimei u'okolethim tokai'iwa: literally: [cat+d.o. marker] [he/she/it is sleeping + d.o. marker] [girl+recipient marker] [he/she/it is giving] [man+agent marker]. Or, "The man is giving the sleeping cat to the girl." "Sleeping" and "cat" must go together, and they're both marked as "direct object." "Girl" is marked as the recipient, which eliminates her from agenthood, and therefore from being the person doing the giving. "He/she/it is giving" can only refer to the noun marked with the agent particle: "man."

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"One does not simply walk into Mortor!"
"It's 'Mordor.' With a 'D.'"

Bump.

This bump is purposeful: I have another weird morphosyntactic system in a conlang, and a question about terminology.

This conlang, Classical Yumetan (native Smachemoa), has a weird variation of the normal accusative system. Agents and experiencers are grouped together as subjects; patients are objects. Both of these are considered marked forms of a word; the unmarked form is used for arguments of the copula and some existential verbs and verbs of location. It doubles as a vocative.

(In some descendant languages, this unmarked form was applied to experiencers too, yielding a tripartite system.)

Anyway, does something like this happen in any natlangs you know? (If not, I'm still going through with it.) Also, what do I call this unmarked case as opposed to the other two?

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< Cev> My people we use cars. I come from a very proud car culture-- every part of the car is used, nothing goes to waste. When my people first saw the car, generations ago, we called it šuŋka wakaŋ-- meaning "automated mobile".

I've read Describing Morphosyntax and now understand this.

In the new iteration of my conlang, I think its ergative-dechticaetiative.

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"I wish life was not so short, he thought. Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."
The Lost Road, by J R R Tolkien

I think I understand this. But a quick question about dechticaetiative systems:

I have the sentence:

I taught math to John.
which, if I understand correctly, would be:
I (agent) taught math (theme) to John (receiver.)

but if I have the sentence:

I taught math.
would 'math' be the patient of the sentence, or would it still be treated as the theme? (in other words, would it be treated as the accusative, or the dechticaetiative?)

Thanks!

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Unfortunately, I don't like this username anymore, but seeing as how I'm too lazy to start a new account, I'll have to stick with this.

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